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FOOTPRINTS OF 
THE CENTURIES I 



By COL. G. A. G" 7 ,H4°T 



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FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 




COL. G. A. GEARHART 



Footprints of 
the Centuries 

By COL. G. A. GEARHART 



Published by 

THE LYCEUMITE PRESS 

CHICAGO, ILL. 



C"EnS5- 



Copyrighted 1909 by 

COL. G. A. GEARHART 

Buffalo. N. Y. 



All rights reserved. 



CLA 244764 
AUa 18 1909 



jforetoorb 



I have often been asked, "Why don't you put your lectures 
in print?" I have decided to do so. My five lectures will be 
in book form during the coming two years. If they meet with 
the same commendation which has everywhere been shown 
when I have given them from the platform, I can ask no higher 
from anyone. Of "Footprints of the Centuries" I have hun- 
dreds of testimonials as strong as the two presented below. 

Last evening Col. G. A. Geaihart gave us his lecture, "The 
Footprints of the Centuries." It was the greatest masterpiece 
of rhetoric, history, poetry, oratory and argument I eyer heard, 
and I have heard the giants of the lecture platform from Beecher 
down. This is the unanimous verdict of the immense audience 
that crowded our lecture hall to the very doors. We sold 
thirty-five hundred tickets at one dollar per ticket for this one 
lecture, which is the greatest triumph in the history of lectures in 
our city." — Elmer E. Helms, D. D„ Pastor Litvwood 
Avenue M. E. Church, Buffalo, N. Y. 

I have never heard as complete, earnest and instructive por- 
trayal of the marvelous progress of Christian civilization. A 
fearless embodiment of truth, it is more— an unanswerable argu- 
ment for God in history and the Christ in human achievements— 
a powerful message from the lecture platform. It has a might}' 
mission; let it be heard by every patriot, whether he be Chris- 
tian or not.— /. T. Pritchett, Pastor M. E. Church, South 
Higginswille, Mo. 



Footprints of the Centuries 



Browning has said : 

"Progress is man's distinctive mark alone. Not 
God's, and not the beasts'. God is, they are; man 
partly is, and wholly hopes to be." 

History is the brilliant searchlight revealing to 
us the Past; and by the light of the "Lamp of the 
Past" we read the future. 

We are following the trail of centuries passed into 
history, enjoying the goodly heritage bequeathed by 
our fathers. America's fair possessions, her broad 
realms of beauty, still undimmed by lapse of years, 
the fathers and mothers- won through blood, toil and 
tears. 

They cleared highways for the millions then unborn, 
From the midnight of oppression to the dawn of Freedom's 
morn. 

Inspired by grateful memories we seek to pene- 
trate the veil of the past, that we may catch new 
inspiration from the story of the struggles and 
achievements of heroic days. 



10 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

As a people we do well to remember the rugged 
patriotism of the fathers; the heroic and unexam- 
pled devotion of mothers, and the intellectual de- 
velopment of their children. As a people we do well 
to remember the songs and legends of pioneer days ; 
and the many sentimental things that have been 
woven into imperishable prose or deathless song 
from the days of the old "Continentals" down to 
that naval achievement in Santiago Harbor; where 
the yellow flag of Spain, lit with the sunset splendor 
of a "World Empire/' faded from the sky of the 
Western Hemisphere. 

Our inspiring past is the prophecy of our glorious 
future. The hands on the dial plate of Time never 
stand still; the steps of Progress never turn back- 
ward. 

AH that we glory in today was once a dream ; 

The world-will marches onward gleam by gleam; 

New voices speak, dead paths begin to stir, 

Man's just emerging from the sepulchre. 

Let no man write, let no man ever dare 

To write on Time's great way "No thoroughfare." 

For the sun of the present century warms a better 
world, shines upon better conditions and illumines a 
nobler humanity than did its predecessors. 

The glad song that's to live through the age, 

That's to flow down the world as the lines down the page, 

Is — Think if you can of a mission more grand 

Than a mission to live in this time and this land! 

And it's the songs we sing, and the smiles we wear 

That's makin' the sun shine everywhere. 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 11 

Nearly one hundred years ago a wise man wrote : 

"We are living, we are dwelling 

In a grand and awful time ; 
In an age on ages telling, 
To be living is sublime." 

But in the age in which the celebrated author 
wrote nothing was known of the telegraph, the cable, 
the telephone or the electric car. There were few 
schools, few churches, and not a public library in 
the United States. All the travel between New 
York and Boston was borne by two stage coaches. 
Twenty days were required for a letter to go over- 
land from New York to Charleston. Imprisonment 
for debt was a common practice. The whipping 
post and pillory were still standing in New York 
and Boston. It is said that when a Virginian an- 
ticipated a journey to New York, he made his will, 
bade farewell to all his friends, never expecting to 
see them again. The Mississippi Valley was not as 
well known as is the heart of Africa today. New 
England girls were not allowed to marry until they 
could bake a loaf of bread, and while it was yet 
warm, cut it in smooth, even slices. Persons who 
criticised the minister or his sermon were fined. 
Church collections were taken in a bag at the end 
of a pole, with a bell attachment to rouse sleepy con- 
tributors. Gentlemen who wore hair powdered it. 

Our national childhood toyed with the "Thirteen 
States." We rejoiced in the little possibilities of 
immigration and naturalization. Manhattan was our 



12 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

empire, and Castle Garden the prophecy of our 
greatness. Magnificent ideas and humanitarian pos- 
sibilities slept in the cradle on whose rocker was the 
foot of a goddess. 

From a few, feeble colonies scattered along the 
Atlantic seaboard, and welded into the United States 
under the heat of the Revolutionary strife, and rec- 
ognized as the "Infantile Republic," the march 
through the century has been a succession of signal 
triumphs. 

"Behold a change that proves e'en fiction true, 
More springing wonders than Aladdin knew. 
Proud domes are reared above the gray wolf's den, 
And forest beasts have fled their homes for men. 
Glittering spires and busy mart's confess 
That man hath quelled a wilderness." 

The howl of the wolf has given place to the whis- 
tle of the engine; and the warwhoop of the Indian 
has been drowned by the music of machinery. The 
cotton fields of our beautiful Southland wave their 
white banners of peace toward the setting sun ; and 
yonder in the Westland, where the wild horse and 
buffalo grazed, limitless fields of ripening grain 
wave back their banners of gold. From the Atlan- 
tic to the Pacific, and from the Lakes to the Gulf 
cities and towns have sprung up like magic ; we hear 
the. hum of industry by day, while the skies of night 
are red with the glare from the fires in our mills and 
furnaces. 

So, the world of our fathers is not our world. 
Out of the ashes of the dead past a new present is 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 13 

continually born. Each generation is peculiar in its 
phases and conditions of life. Every age has its 
crises to meet, its problems to solve. 

Standing on the threshold of all that is yet to be, 
we are faced by new conditions. Steam and elec- 
tricity have compressed the earth ; the elbows of the 
nations touch. Time and space are practically de- 
stroyed. New York is nearer to Europe than Bos- 
ton was to Philadelphia in the days of our fathers. 
The "Golden Gate" is nearer to Manila than Maine 
was to the Carolinas. The sea is a highway and a 
whispering gallery; we talk with our English cous- 
ins before breakfast; we visit them between Sun- 
days. The whistle of the locomotive is the herald 
of social and industrial revolution in the life and 
purposes of all peoples and nations of the world. 
Railroad tracks and telegraph wires are the veins of 
business blood, thrift and energy; and every rail- 
road tie and telegraph pole a milestone on the mar- 
velous onward march of the most progressive na- 
tion in the world. 

Today we face the future, multitudinous with dis- 
coveries, inventions, opportunities and possibilities. 
The thoughtful man, he who loves his race, and 
especially those who are to live after him, is con- 
tinually asking, "What will it be? What measure 
of influence is it to exert upon coming centuries? 
What part is it to play in the great drama of Time ? 
The problem raised by the questions is so vast, and 
the elements involved in them are so numerous, that 



14 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

it seems we can do little more than ask them; and 

yet we can hardly content ourselves until we have 

made an attempt to look into the future that means 

to humanity wretchedness or joy. At first it seems 

an almost impenetrable maze; but even a maze may 

be threaded if the traveler have a line to guide his 

way. 

The proposition which I propose to bring to your 

thought is this: The Twentieth Century will take 

its character from that of the men and women who 

are to live in it. More and more we are coming to 

see that the purpose of the material universe is to 

furnish an arena in which the race may win those 

victories which are to be crowned with Eternal 

Life. God never fails in an experiment, nor tries 

experiment upon a race but to educe its highest style 

of life and sublimate its issues. We turn to the past 

to find that — 

"Through all the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the 
suns." 

Progress has its deepest root in history. Great 
forces pour into the present, receiving their first im- 
pulse from times and conditions more remote. Our 
civilization, its breadth of culture and wealth of in- 
vention, is heir to the genius of the past. Our insti- 
tutions have been rocked in the cradle of immemorial 
history, and are grown gray with the lapse of ages. 
They bear the impress of the struggles and triumphs 
of the thousand generations gone before us. The 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 15 

greatest achievement of science, the ripest product 
of our thinking have been the silent growth of cen- 
turies. Out of the past does thought drink its deep- 
est inspiration, and action gather its noblest motive. 

The great Fulton taught us how to defy the hurri- 
cane, and to reduce the ocean to a ferry. Franklin 
discovered the archimedean lever in the electric 
switch and turned on a power that is lifting the 
world. Morse made electricity our mercury, anni- 
hilating time and space in the transmission of intelli- 
gence, and Alexander Graham Bell has brought the 
world's ear to our desk and makes it listen. 

The conquest of the air is an achievement we are 
beginning to realize. We shall soon be able to leave 
earth's crowded highways and go coursing through 
the unobstructed skyway. We shall invent a motor 
that will utilize efficiently the heat of the solar rays. 
Every human want finds its expression in terms of 
light, heat and power; and when these are made 
cheap enough, the earth will be a playground, and 
every land and sea will pulse and vibrate under the 
touch of the human finger and the guidance of the 
human brain. 

Now may we not logically take a little time to re- 
mind ourselves how the retrospect shows us that the 
world was made for man, and has been waiting for 
him to discover its secrets, master its forces and 
enjoy its rewards ? 

The work of creation occupied six full periods 
called days. At the close of the fifth the observer 



16 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

would have said the work was complete. There 
were the heavens and the earth ; the greater light to 
rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night. There 
were the wide sweeping oceans swarming with 
water life from whale to minnow. There were vast 
continents covered with forest and fruit-bearing 
trees, among which roamed countless herds of beasts 
both great and small. All this life, both animal and 
vegetal, was endowed with the power of reproduc- 
tion each after its kind. And now an air of expect- 
ancy rests over the great work as creation waits for 
the revealing of the sons of God. The house is 
erected and equipped from garret to cellar. There 
is money in the safe, and provision in the pantry. 
Servants are ready to serve, and beasts to bear, but 
everything is waiting for the master of the home. 
Out of the council of Heaven comes this decree: 
"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, 
and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, 
and over the fowls of the air, over the cattle, and 
over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that 
creepeth upon the earth." So God created man in 
His own image. Male and female created He them. 
And God saw all the work He had made and it was 
good. The master and mistress have come; the 
house is transformed into a home; the expectation 
of creation is satisfied; and on the seventh day God 
rested from all the work He had made. 

The artist has told the same story in his peculiar 
way. You may have seen the picture. There is a 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 17 

magnificent landscape. The grass is green and the 
flowers are tinted by the sunshine of God's earliest 
springtime. A stream of pure, limpid water flows 
through a verdure-clad valley and is lost in the dis- 
tance. Birds of brightest plumage fly from leafy 
bower to blossom-covered fruit trees. Beasts of 
perfect form, to whom fear is a stranger, graze upon 
the hillside. The central figure of the picture is a 
human form of faultless proportions reclining on a 
moss bed near the bank of the stream. The figure 
is that of a man ; but the listless attitude, the aimless, 
dreamy eye, is that of a noble but purposeless beast. 
The scene, while one of matchless beauty, is sug- 
gestive of waiting. Just above the reclining form 
appears a white cloud of softened brilliancy. Out 
of the cloud is extended a hand throbbing and puls- 
ing with indescribable power. As if drawn by di- 
vine magnetism the right hand of the languid form 
is lifted. As the hand of the divine approaches the 
one not yet human, there leaps the spark of man- 
hood, and the handsome beast becomes a living soul. 
Now the expectation of creation is satisfied. There 
has appeared upon this magnificent scene one to 
whom all this life and beauty have a meaning, and 
to whose welfare they may minister. 

The thought of story and picture is, that man is 
the crowning work of creation. That in him all the 
problems of earth and sea and sky are somehow to 
be solved. That the world is a kingdom whose 



18 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

throne is vacant until man is seated thereon to direct 
the energies of the empire. 

Apparently this proposition has twice been dis- 
proven in the progress of human thought. 

Among the earliest hypothesis of creation was the 
Ptolemaic. According to its terms the earth was 
set at the center of the universe and was stationary. 
The sun, moon, planets and stars were glistening 
beauties set in magnificent glass spheres which re- 
volved about the Eome of man solely for his pleasure 
and profit as the panorama passes before the eyes of 
the audience. Dante wrote, "The sun was created 
expressly to give man light and heat. The stars in 
their courses to preside over his strangely checkered 
destinies; the winds to blow, the floods to rise, and 
the fiend of pestilence to stalk abroad over the land, 
all for the blessing or warning or chiding of the 
chief among God's creatures, Man." 

This hypothesis harmonizes perfectly with the 
thought before us, that man is prince of creation. 
But Copernicus with one blow shattered all this dec- 
orated glassware. His theory tore the earth from 
its fixed central position of chief glory and hurled it 
an obscure and tiny speck out into the blackness of 
space, wholly invisible amid the throng of flaming 
suns that make up our galaxy. His proposition 
took man from the throne and made him a mere in- 
cident to a mighty plan that was being wrought out 
without the slightest regard to his existence. This 
was to overturn the very foundation of the current 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 19 

belief. We are not surprised that a mistaken 
Church, in its efforts to defend the proposition of the 
kingship of man, persecuted such heroes as Galileo 
and Bruno, by whom they believed it to be assailed. 

But the after-thought was the better thought. It 
by and by dawned upon the fathers that man's king- 
ship does not depend upon his place in the universe. 
When they learned the true condition of things they 
saw that the vast fiery suns are still the titan-like 
servants of the little planets which they bear with 
them through the distant abysses of space, and 
which, like thoughtful servants, they keep at a safe 
distance from their own consuming flame. But the 
past century has witnessed what many consider a 
more serious assault upon man's kingship. 

The anthropologist tells us that man is not a sep- 
arate order as we had supposed. He not only classes 
him as a vertebrate, a mammal, a primate, but insists 
that he is of the genus of the catarrhine family of 
apes. That just as lions, leopards and lynxes, vari- 
ous genera of the cat family, are descended from a 
common stock of carnivora back to which we may 
trace the pedigree of dogs, hyenas, bears and seals, 
so the various genera of apes, including man, are 
doubtless descended from a common stock of pri- 
mates, back to which we may trace the converging 
pedigrees of lemurs and monkeys until their ancestry 
becomes indistinguishable from that of rabbits and 
squirrels. 



20 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

This proposition does seem to assail man's king- 
ship. No wonder that the believer in Genesis at 
first thought rejects the doctrine as unscriptural ! 
For if man is physically akin to baboons as pigs are 
to horses and cows are to deer, he cannot be the 
prince of the world. He is only an incident to an 
endless series of changes. Ages ago, according to 
this theory, some bird-like reptile was supreme. 
Ages hence man will yield the scepter to some higher 
creation, and so on forever. 

But the man of science asks us to hear him to the 
end before we reject his teaching. While he insists 
that man was evolved from lower forms, in accord- 
ance with the principle of natural selection and the 
"survival of the fittest" when the physical man was 
fully developed, the direction of the evolution was 
squarely changed. Its energies were turned into 
intellectual channels. Thence each generation dif- 
fered from the preceding not in bodily form as be- 
fore, but in larger and more enfolded brain. This 
process continued until the difference intellectually 
between a Shakespeare and an Australian was fifty 
times greater than that between an Australian and 
an orang-outang; until it was many times greater 
than that between the ape and the halibut, which 
though of equal weight has a forebrain smaller than 
a melon seed. In mathematical power the Aus- 
tralian who cannot tell the number of fingers on his 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 21 

two hands is much nearer a lion or a wolf than to Sir 
Rowan Hamilton, who invented the method of 
quaternions. But later on the course of develop- 
ment was changed again. When the human intel- 
lect had reached a stage of completeness correspond- 
ing to that of the body it was left to be trained by the 
various circumstances and conditions which should 
surround it. Then its energies were directed to the 
moral nature. During the lengthened infancy of 
their offspring, demanding more care on the part of 
the human parent, parental love was developed. 
With their growing ability to cultivate the soil and 
so provide their own food, there came a cessation of 
that dog-like strife for bread which has been char- 
acteristic of the race. Thus there was laid a foun- 
dation upon which society could build the cities of 
peace. We are told that we are now in this third 
stage of evolution. At this point the man of sci- 
ence, who has been accounted an enemy of the faith, 
becomes a prophet. Because he believes so firmly 
in the progress of the past, he looks forward with 
larger faith to glorious triumphs in the future. His 
face shines like that of Stephen as he foretells. And 
as the centuries roll on war will cease, not by the 
edict of international statutes, but through a fully 
developed regard for human life. Person and prop- 
erty and virtue will be safe, not out of fear of the 
courts,, but by the force of the broader law of love. 



22 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

Thus science does not, after all, take man from the 
humble throne upon which a mythical theology had 
placed him, but sets him on a throne hard by the 
throne of God. Thus story and picture and science 
harmonize. They declare together that creation has 
waited, yea, is waiting for the revealing of man. 
That this is "the one far off divine event toward 
which all creation moves." 

But it is in no theory of creation that we see God's 
purpose to develop the highest manhood on this 
planet, but the unfolding of His purposes since crea- 
tion shows how patiently He has waited for man to 
become able to appreciate His gifts. 

Long before the foot of man touched the surface 
of the earth, rich deposits of precious metals were 
laid in the creek bottoms and mingled with the sands 
of California and Alaska. 

How many ages those grand old mountains 
waited with sublime patience for man to thrust his 
hand deep into their eternal pockets and draw forth 
the gold! Ever since hydrogen and oxygen were 
first joined in marriage, and fell in dense showers 
on the white-hot rocks of the Archean age, and were 
shot upward in vast clouds of steam, a power des- 
tined to give birth to a world-wide commerce waited 
a call to service. How long it waited! How it 
wooed man! How it played about his cook-room 
all through the centuries, waiting for Watt to give it 
hands and fingers and feet with which it might bear 
the burdens of the world ! 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 23 

"Its first tones were heard by an old-fashioned hearth ; 
'Twas an anthem's faint cry on the brink of its birth; 
'Twas the teakettle's drowsy and droning refrain, 
As it sang through its nose as it swung on the crane. 
'Twas a being begun and waiting its brains, 
To be saddled and bridled and given the reins ; 
Today its lungs are of steel, its breathings of fire, 
It crunches the miles with an iron desire ; 
With its white cloud of mane like a banner unfurled, 
It howls through the hills, it pants 'round the world." 

Away back in God's fifth day, when fishes were 
first born in the sea, He set in the heart of the west 
Alleghenies, and in the lake plains of Ohio, and 
where else we do not know, His gigantic gas plant. 
We cannot count the ages during which that gaseous 
mass swirled to and fro in its prison house, waiting 
for man to unlock its prison doors and set it free to 
leap forth in gladness, bringing light and heat to the 
hearths of homes. Somewhere in the clash and con- 
flict of a borning world another mysterious agency 
had its origin. During intervening cycles electricity 
had been waiting — restlessly, impatiently waiting. 
It went flashing and dancing across the sky, vainly 
trying to teach man the lesson of its power. How 
long it waited for one skillful enough to lasso the 
winged steed and make it the courier of commerce ! 
Today electricity lights our homes, draws our cars, 
stands guard over our lives, bears our messages of 
business and words of love. 

But the door of the temple of electrical marvels 
is just opening, and we are at the threshold dimly 



24 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

comprehending. Standing in the dazzling light of 
the world's greatest progress let no man say there 
remains nothing in electricity yet to be discovered. 

We have seen but the dawning of the "Electric 
Age." We are at the threshold of the temple of 
wonders. We have been permitted but a glimpse 
at the dazzling marvels that are within. Into every 
thoughtful mind must be borne some comprehension 
of the industrial revolution that is coming. Al- 
ready the flash of instantaneous intelligence girdles 
the earth. Long distance telephone wires have 
leaped from city to city, and the human voice is 
heard almost across the continent. Night is all but 
turned into day. The oratory of statesmen and the 
music of great composers are stored away as treas- 
ures to be heard long after the voices are dumb. 
What is there yet to come? What is there yet for 
us in the depths of the undiscovered ? Many of the 
brightest minds of the world are today working on 
the problems of electricity. It is in the air about 
us; without it, probably we could not live. It is 
generated by the waves of the sea, by the flight of 
birds, by the rubbing of our palms, and yet, what is 
it? Ask electricians. The wisest of them shake 
their heads. It is life. It is God-like. Terrible 
in its power to destroy, stupendous in its helpful- 
ness to mankind, yet invisible. Thousands gaze 
upon God's magnificent handiwork at Niagara, that 
crowning gem of the world's scenery, where today 
are joined nature's most splendid contribution to 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 25 

man, and man's most brilliant achievement. Where 
the mighty overflow of Superior, Huron, Michigan 
and Erie leaps one hundred and seventy feet, mag- 
nificent in volume, stupendous in breadth, and awe- 
inspiring in its ceaseless thunderings which have 
haunted that place with the same dread solemnity 
since darkness brooded on the deep and light came 
rushing on creation at the word of God, there was 
set the world's stupendous water power. Man has 
harnessed the "Thunderer of Waters" to God's in- 
visible electricity ; mighty Niagara no longer squan- 
ders all its gigantic energies in leaping, rolling and 
rumbling under its clouds of spray and mist and 
shining rainbow, but proclaims to the world its will- 
ingness and ability to turn the wheels of industry 
for a continent. 

"Flow on Niagara! God hath set His rainbow on 
thy forehead and the cloud-mantles 'round thy feet. 
He gave thy voice of thunder power to speak of Him 
eternally; bidding the lip of man keep silence, and 
forever on thy rocky altar pour incense of awe-struck 
praise." 

Who can count the incandescent globes with which 
Edison has arched the highway of human progress, 
dotting the industrial firmament with millions of fila- 
ments of glowing beauty, giving light to the cities 
and towns of two hemispheres? 

We are coming into the white light of the world's 
greatest progress. The youths of today who are 
being educated in electricity are pointing the way 



26 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

through this temple of wonders to inventions and ap- 
plications of mechanical and electrical science that 
will astound the world. Look back again! Away 
yonder, when God said "Let there be light," and 
there was light, there was hidden in the heart of that 
first sunbeam a ray that knows no hindrance, but 
passes through wood and skin and flesh. All the 
ages that mysterious ray has been falling upon the 
human eye, pleading for an opportunity to reveal se- 
crets for the ignorance of which skill has been baf- 
fled, and life sacrificed. Had it been a human thing 
it would have lost its patience waiting for Roentgen 
to give it the equipment with which it might lay 
bare the secrets of science and life. 

Long before the sun became the sun there was 
formed an illimitable, invisible, intangible ocean in 
which all future worlds should swim as fishes in the 
sea. All the cycles since creation this ether has sur- 
rounded and permeated man, waiting to yield to him 
mysteries of power of which we are today ignorant. 
Its long waiting has brought its fruition, for it has 
shown itself able to carry our messages without any 
visible means of transportation, 

"Wondering science stands herself perplexed 
At each day's miracles, and asks "What next ?" 

We are considering as to when the telegraph wire 
will wholly give place to ether waves, as the human 
messenger gave place to the wire, and thought will 
fly across the continent to distant friends as prayer 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 27 

flies upward to the living God. And we are to re- 
member that these are God's powers; and of his 
placing before man. Yet in great wisdom He waits 
until man is able to give the power its needed equip- 
ment. Electricity is not the wonder of the age. 
Wireless telegraphy is not the modern miracle. 
More marvelous than either is the development of 
the mind of man. The wind that wafts the fleet 
across the sea is God's ; the sail and helm are man's. 
Whether the wind shall dash the fleet upon the rocks 
or bear it safely to the harbor, depends upon the set 
of sail and helm. The electricity that flashes light 
to the darkest corner of the great city is God's ; the 
wire is man's. The greater the surface of the wire 
the stronger the current that can be sent through it. 
The steam that draws family and furniture from the 
old home in the east to the new home in the west, is 
God's steam ; the engine is man's. Without the en- 
gine the steam would be powerless save to burn and 
destroy. We stand in awe as we consider how many 
forces may be hidden about us only waiting for man 
to become wise enough to discover and equip, that 
he may safely use them. If we ask the origin of 
these forces, Genesis with a million voices of nature 
answers, "In the beginning, God." 

It is frequently declared that this is a materialistic 
age. But almost before the reproach is heard sci- 
ence declares that there is no such thing as inert mat- 
ter. That every atom is alive. That our mortal 
bodies are conglomerations of living organisms upon 



28 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

whose pitched battles in our veins depends our health 
or disease. 

Take one instance! Consider all that we today 
understand by the word "microbe," and remember 
that the microbe was practically unknown sixty 
years ago. In this sense, science has revealed a 
"New Heaven" and a "New Earth." Infinitely 
marvelous ! Testifying to an understanding so vast 
that the mind of man by searching cannot find it out. 

Today we weigh the stars, analyze their composi- 
tion in the spectroscope; we photograph the moon, 
we make maps of the canals of Mars. We imprison 
the sunbeam, we harness the lightning, we know the 
chemistry of systems, we read the earth's history in 
the rocks, we photograph the interior of solid 
bodies; in short, we have become the masters of 
every known force. And yet, far more stupendous 
are the discoveries that have been made, not in the 
infinitely distant abysses of space, but in the world 
of the infinitely little, all about us. 

"In wonder-workings or some bush aflame 
Men look for God and fancy Him concealed; 
But in earth's common things He stands revealed, 
And Grass and Flowers and Stars spell out His name. ,, 

"Earth's crammed with heaven, 
And every common bush afire with God." 

Not only in science, but in the nearer and more im- 
portant field of social life, may we discover the prog- 
ress that has been making for the century just before 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 29 

us. During the past one hundred years much has 
been done to enlarge the liberty and promote the 
welfare of the race. The regard shown for chil- 
dren is an excellent gauge of the civilization of the 
age. In the early centuries the child was as dirt 
beneath the feet of brute strength or greedy wealth. 
Children could be worked to death in mills and fac- 
tories before they were eight years of age. No one 
cared for them. No one educated them. No one 
shielded them from torture or avenged them when 
they were done to death. Today they are emanci- 
pated from labor until they are 12 to 14 years of 
age. They are protected by stringent regulations 
and constant inspection. Their schools stand like 
palaces in the midst of dingy streets. Playgrounds 
are provided; a whole literature has been supplied 
for them ; while behind all the machinery of the law 
stands the avenging angel of tortured childhood, 
"The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Chil- 
dren." 

And as with the child, so with woman. In the 
early centuries she was little more than an append- 
age to man ; a nought placed at his side to give him 
a higher place. A creature to be petted if she were 
handsome, to be made a servant if she were homely. 
Having no legal existence she had few privileges 
except such as man chose to grant her. Now I 
would not cast one reproach upon the woman of the 
past. Rather, I would pause and pay her tribute. 
Words are inadequate to the theme. Woman has 



30 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

always been the joy of the Age. Whatever her 
condition, she bore it with complacency, accepted 
inferiority as a badge of glory, suffered injustice 
without complaint, and never murmured through a 
thousand years. 

She believed that she was predestined to keep man 
from being lonesome. She believed what men 
taught her; that there in Genesis God placed the 
lines of life and destiny about the sexes, mapped out 
for each its work, the one to labor, the other to love. 
She made home sweet, shared every sorrow, doubled 
every joy, and blessed the lives of the children ; for 
in the last and holiest of all relationships — mother- 
hood — she held her noblest kingdom in the home, 
and ruled it like a queen. Then let us more and 
more glorify the vocation of motherhood; for the 
only queen that shall endure is the mother, on her 
rocking-chair throne, with the little ones kneeling 
at her side, and baby-voices prattling, "Now I lay 
me down to sleep." 

This was the old-fashioned woman. The woman 
of our dreams. And may our right hand wither 
when we forget the mothers. Let us lift our heads 
and hearts in homage to that golden memory, while 
history breathes the sweetest benediction on that 
honored name. 

But there has been a change ; and on the whole a 
change for the better. I know that every change 
in social life has its wrecks. That there are always 
some weak ones who are only waiting an opportu- 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 31 

nity to let their weaknesses reveal themselves. And 
so today there is a woman who defies the soft con- 
ceptions of her sex and shocks the world. She is 
bold and unwomanly, insolent and aggressive. She 
abuses man and then indulges in the rankest imita- 
tion of his garb. She scorns home, and calls chil- 
dren brats. There is no joy in innocence for her; 
no glimpse of heaven in a babe's blue eye; no song 
in rippling laughter, no grace in pattering feet. In 
social customs and fashionable garments she out- 
runs decency in the baldest exposure of bodily 
charms. She rebels against the conventional re- 
strictions of her sex, and apes man in his freedom, 
pursuits, clothing, manners, amusements, and some- 
times, morals. This is the woman to whom a cele- 
brated preacher said, "If one of you women ever 
come to me to talk religion, the first thing I do will 
be to pull off my coat and put it on you, so that I 
can be pious while I talk." This is the woman who 
holds her body not as a shrine of virtue, but as a 
temple of lust, and a snare for the baser passions 
of mankind. She represents nothing but folly, or 
"Original Sin," but a great deal of that. I say 
there is such a woman ; and because she is so brazen, 
and makes such a show of herself, many are saying 
that she is "The New Woman" — the natural prod- 
uct of the social evolution through which we are now 
passing. And so, these people, thinking that pure, 
sweet, modest womanhood ts imperiled, would lock 
every door at which woman is knocking for admis- 



32 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

sion. Women are better than men ; but when they 
forget it, they forget it so hard that it is discour- 
aging. 

But there is a new woman who, having lost none 
of the sweetness has gained much of the strength of 
the newer age. While she still stands ready to 
crown man victor in the lists of physical endeavor, 
she has herself entered the lists for the crown and 
the laurels of strife. She does not look down upon 
home ! She acknowledges that only when woman is 
led in love and honor to the altar, does she become 
a queen. But she believes that a useful princess is 
more honored than a disappointed queen. Then — 
she has seen that young men as a rule are more reck- 
less in their living than young women, and she can 
reason well enough to know that so long as this 
continues there always will be more worthy young 
women than there are young men fit to become their 
husbands. And so there must be, for a long time, 
at least, a goodly company of women who must do 
their work outside the sacred precincts of home. 
And when she looks about her she finds there are 
wide fields in which noble women whose heart- 
yearnings for a home can never be satisfied, may do 
blessed service. So, in the last half of the 19th cen- 
tury she began a work that is only a prophecy of 
what she is to do for the 20th century. She has de- 
fied the prejudice which had heretofore shut her out 
from the benefits of higher education. For a thou- 
sand years men said that "Woman had no brain for 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 33 

a higher development. That her limited capacity- 
would make her unsafe beyond the confines of the 
home unless she was carefully escorted by her liege 
lord." The old philosophers taught that a woman 
ought not to leave home but three times in her life ; 
namely, to be baptized, to be married and to be 
buried. The women were looking for most pleas- 
ure in the last trip. Men glorified her intuition, but 
refused to credit it to brains. They said, "She sees 
without eyes, thinks without reason, and is infallible 
within her sphere without logical processes." 

But she has demonstrated her capacity for higher 
education, as we see when we recall the fact that 
today in the east alone are ten colleges exclusively 
for women, whose standards are as high as any on 
the continent, and they are thronged with eager, 
earnest, studious, brilliant young women. Today, 
as with more unclouded vision we look away toward 
Mt. Holyoke, Wellesley, Smith, Vassar, Bryn Mawr, 
Oxford, Oberlin, Painesville, Elmira and the host 
of co-educational institutions, including our western 
colleges and universities, we feel that we have indeed 
made mighty strides from the day when the hard 
rule was that "woman should know her place and 
keep it;" when a Connecticut town voted "not to 
expend any money for schooling girls;" when the 
question was asked, "What can education ever do 
for women?" The majority failed to see that it 
might be immeasurably fruitful in reproducing mil- 
lions of noble women who would know what they 



34 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

were living for, who would uplift and ennoble the 
race. Today we are proud of that magnificent army 
of educated women in our country who are not 
afraid to stand alone if necessary, and are grandly 
moving in all uplifting services. 

Educate women and you educate the teachers of 
men. If "the child is father to the man," woman 
forms the man in educating the child. The teach- 
ings of the nursery are wrought out in all subsequent 
relationships in life. Its voice sounds from the pul- 
pit and the public forum. Its principles guide con- 
duct in all private and public affairs. No page of 
human history is so instructive and significant as 
the record of those early influences that develop the 
character and direct the lives of eminent men. 

"Educate a man and you educate an individual. 
Educate a woman and you educate a family." 

Of the 500,000 public school teachers in this coun- 
try today, 400,000 are women. It is said "What 
woman wills, God wills." And — 

"Disguise our bondage as we will, 
Woman rules us still." 

Today in the wide fields of co-education side by side 
in lessons with men, woman is sharing high honors 
in the mightiest institutions of the world. The last 
barrier to her mental kingdom has been won. The 
gates have been opened everywhere ; and with cour- 
age, energy and splendid purpose her brains are put- 
ting in peril the once so-called "Intellectual Superi- 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 35 

ority" of the other sex. Many of us have seen an- 
cient prejudices fade in the light of her grand 
achievements until we have come to feel that as 
there has been no limit to her triumphs in the past, 
there should be no possible barrier to her future suc- 
cesses. For woman has won a right to make a liv- 
ing for herself. Won it against prejudice and re- 
sistance. At first the world received her proposi- 
tion with derision and scornful laughter. Every 
prophecy of unsexment was thrown in her way. It 
was said, "If this be done there'll be no place like 
home; for home will be the only place 
where you cannot find a woman." But she 
persevered. She demanded admission to the 
honorable pursuits of the day. How won- 
derfully she has succeeded! When Harriet 
Martineau came to this country in 1840 she found 
but seven paying occupations open to women. They 
were allowed to teach, sew, keep boarding-house, 
work in factories, set type, and become bookbinders 
by trade. The last census shows a list of more than 
250 employments in which women are successfully 
and honorably engaged. From the census of 1900 
we learn that there were at that time in this country 
3,500 women preaching the Gospel; 1,010 practicing 
law; 7,500 practicing medicine; 20,000 managing 
postoffices, and more than 5,000,000 earning inde- 
pendent incomes. A farmer in the West who had 
married one of the most efficient school teachers in 
the East, and through whose education, economy 



36 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

and good management he had accumulated a reason- 
ably large fortune, was visiting with her at her girl- 
hood home recently, when one of her friends, know- 
ing something of the conditions in the western 
home, asked him if he regarded marriage as a fail- 
ure. "Well," he replied, "it's mighty expensive to 
keep a wife; they're awfully extravagant; and then 
you can't git any of 'em to work mor 'n 'bout eight- 
een hours a day ! But now there's my wife Lucindy, 
gits up in the mornin', builds the fire, milks six cows, 
gits breakfast, washes the dishes, gits six children 
ready for school an' looks after the other five ; feeds 
the hens and the hogs and the calves and some 
motherless lambs, skims twenty pans of milk, does 
the churnin', gets dinner, toots the dinner-horn, 
waits on the men at table, clears away the dishes, 
does a little ironin', hoes a little in the garden, gits 
supper, takes care of the milkin', gits the young ones 
to bed, mends their clothes, does a little readin' and 
gits to bed long 'bout 12 o'clock! Now, I couldn't 
hire anybody out there in Kansas to do all that the 
year 'round for board and seven dollars wuth o' 
clothes." Well, I want to say to the young men, 
that the bright, intelligent young women of today 
won't marry for board and clothes. They've got 
better jobs. Since 1880 the patent office has grant- 
ed more than 7,500 patents to women; and there are 
today in the city of New York alone ten thousand 
women who by their own hand and brain labor are 
supporting their husbands. One of these useless 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 37 

fellows, weighing about 250 pounds, was brought 
before one of our police justices on the charge of 
vagrancy. He immediately asked permission to 
send for his wife. In a few minutes a little, thin 
and thinly-clad woman was given a seat by the of- 
fender's side. The justice, a very kindly man, said, 
"Sir, the charge against you is vagrancy. It will 
now be necessary for you to show to the satisfaction 
of the Court that you have some visible means of 
support." Turning to the little woman the big 
fellow said, "Margaret, git up on yer feet so the 
koort kin take a look at yez." I think the best thing 
I ever heard said for "Mormonism" was that it did 
not put the entire burden and responsibility of sup- 
porting a husband upon one woman. 

But her right to labor and her right to learn have 
proven themselves to be God-given rights, for she 
is seeking to use them in blessing mankind. Out 
of her larger love has been born that mighty "cru- 
sade" against the saloon and liquor traffic that is 
putting to shame the fawning, cringing servility of 
men toward an iniquitous business that debauches 
manhood, degrades womanhood and beggars child- 
hood. We only wait now the time when the brother 
will stand manfully by the side of the sister, and the 
"saloon will go." 

Then she is deeply in earnest in another crusade. 
With Meredith she feels that "No life can be pure 
in its purpose and strong in its strife, and all life not 
be purer and stronger thereby." 



38 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

Experience has taught her that man may lay hold 
of every power that God has crowded into the secret 
chambers of nature, and yet remain a blotch upon 
the social landscape. Today the "Social Sin" is the 
gloomiest shadow on the "Social Sun." It's open 
and flagrant, it's shameful and defiant. Woman has 
grown tired of that suffering and waiting policy 
which for 1,800 years has ruled the world governed 
by man. But men, the age of tears is over ; the age 
of action has come. "The clock of Time has struck 
the woman's hour." It's time to adopt a stronger, 
even if a sterner, policy. It's time to draw near the 
Christly model. It's time to build a code of morals 
not for one sex, but for both. So that man shall no 
longer live two lives while woman must stand or 
fall by one. To this mighty work woman has 
girded herself ; to its accomplishment the great heart 
and working will of the sex is striving. May God 
crown her efforts with success. 

"Don't talk about a woman's sphere 

As if it had a limit. 
There's not a place on earth or in heaven, 
There's not a task to mankind given ; 
There's not a whisper, "yes" or "no," 
There's not a blessing or a woe ; 
There's not a life or birth 
That has a feather's weight of worth, 

Without a woman in it." 

She can't vote today in all the states, but the 
time is not far distant when the intelligence of this 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 39 

country will be given a "square deal" at the ballot- 
box. 

One of the greatest advances of the past century 
is the progress made upon the farm. The old-style 
farmer with but little education, wholly dependent 
upon the caprices of nature, is rarely to be found. 
While in his place has come the practical, intelli- 
gent business men, who makes farming an indus- 
try, who applies both science and brains to its devel- 
opment. The farmer of today knows how to make 
the most of what he has. How to turn the gifts of 
nature to their best uses. How to control them so 
they will yield the best results. It is not an exag- 
geration to say that the modern, up-to-date farmer 
is the most independent man in all the industrial 
system. He has made farming a legitimate busi- 
ness; not a mere means of eking out a livelihood; 
and if he is a good business man, other things being 
equal, he can always make farming successful. In 
close touch with the social and intellectual world, 
yet not so dependent upon it's whims as his brother 
in the city, the problem of "How to keep the boy 
on the farm" is being rapidly solved. Today the 
farmer reads and thinks and studies. He's no 
longer deceived by the demagogues, but understands 
that his best interests lie along the lines of nationa! 
progress and prosperity. 

The farmer is the world's producer. He feeds 
himself, he feeds the world ; his influence as a social 
and political factor is steadily increasing. The 



40 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

country boy may not arrive at maturity as early as 
the city boy, but in many cases he's vastly greater 
when he reaches it. Comparatively few great men 
have sprung from the exhausted soil of the metropo- 
lis. Not from among fortune's favorites reveling in 
luxury, but from among the sons of toil cradled in 
poverty, have come the world's benefactors. Coun- 
try boys have stamped their influence upon their 
own and future generations. 

One of the crying evils of today is the great com- 
binations of wealth, the inequality of its distribu- 
tion; and the poor have come to look with envy 
upon the rich, while some would resort to violence 
for an even distribution of God's goods. Yet it is 
well to bear in mind that Reformation will not come 
through Deformation and that better days will not 
come to Labor through pillage and fire and blood. 

The past century has done much in preparing the 
laboring man for the triumphs that await him in the 
century just before us. The very discontent of 
these days is a sign of his progress. He is now 
clamoring for things which an hundred years ago 
men never dreamed they could possess. Then 
wages, according to high authority, were less than 
half what they are today, while everything he used 
cost nearly twice as much. Outside of America he 
practically had no voice in the state, no stake in the 
country. He had no parks; the streets, his only 
gathering places, were foul with garbage and fecu- 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 41 

lent with sewage. The water he drank might come 
from the graveyard so far as the state cared. He 
had few books, few newspapers, no baths, no clubs; 
no schools for his children, no holidays for himself. 

Today in the cities he has the museums, the li- 
braries, the art galleries as free as air. He is as 
free in the parks as if they were his own domains. 
He has his clubs, his trades unions, his benefit asso- 
ciations. Today his vote is his scepter; and al- 
though he often misuses it and fails to get the best 
out of it, yet it is his scepter, waiting only the time 
when he'll be wise enough and true enough to make 
him the real ruler of the world. A better education 
is within his reach today than the middle classes 
could have secured for love or money an hundred 
years ago. He has shortened hours of labor, "bank 
holidays" and half-a-day Saturday. Hospitals serve 
him free of charge when in need; the streets are 
cleaned; pure water is piped to his home, while a 
magnificent and costly system of drainage carries 
away all the sewage from his door. A one-cent 
postal card will carry his message across the conti- 
nent; a newspaper costing the same brings the 
world's news to his door. For a nickel he can buy 
some of the best books, and without the nickel the 
libraries throw open to him the books and papers and 
magazines from all parts of the known world. 

We still have too many convicts and paupers ; but 
in the morning of the Nineteenth Century the per- 



42 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

centage of convicts was twenty times as high, while 
that of the paupers was thirty-six where it is sixteen 
today. 

In the higher realm of religion the Nineteenth 
Century did noble, preparatory work. In the morn- 
ing of that century the larger part of the Church 
was secularized. This was especially true of the Es- 
tablished Church of England and the Roman 
Church. An eminent writer says that one of his 
earliest memories is that of hearing a discussion as 
to whether a neighboring preacher, familiarly 
known as "Drunken Jack," was or was not too 
much intoxicated to properly perform the burial 
service. Even among the clergy of our country 
who had advanced so far as to call themselves 
"Puritans" the use of whisky and wine was very 
general. But in England the "Oxford movement" 
evangelized the State Church, while the revival in 
which Bishop Newman was so closely identified did 
the same for the Roman Church. A spirit of genu- 
ine religious enthusiasm lit anew the flame of piety 
in many a parish, and the good works that followed 
were too excellent to lose their savor because the 
Vicar held some peculiar notions about his church 
being the only one upon which the blessing of God 
could fall. In Scotland and in Wales there spread 
the spirit of piety until the government was awak- 
ened in its very conscience, and the life of the people 
was largely purified. 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 43 

In our own country there was the "Finney re- 
vival" of the "Forties," while in these later years 
innumerable men, upon whom the spirit of God had 
descended in mighty power, are moving the world 
of men to deeper thinking, and are leading them to 
see as they have not before the secret of a spiritual 
life with its consequent privileges and power. 

It is a common charge which the world brings 
against the Church, that as soon as any sect becomes 
strong it leaves behind the degraded and the out- 
cast and lives among the intelligent and well-to-do. 
This is only another way of saying that when you 
get religion in the hearts of men they rise in the 
scale of social and financial living, as the balloon 
rises when it is filled with gas. The Church grows 
respectable as it grows older because those who have 
the spirit of the Master, rise to respectability. So 
it becomes necessary that every now and then a new 
movement should start in the alleys, that it may 
lead the people out into the broad avenues. The 
Methodist Church did this service for the world in 
the Eighteenth Century, and in the Nineteenth, Mrs. 
Booth, with her husband's assistance, founded the 
"Salvation Army," and her children, dedicated 
from their birth to the service of God in the finding 
and reclaiming of His prodigal sons and daughters, 
are carrying it on and bringing untold hope and hap- 
piness into homes where only the curse and cry were 
heard before. 



44 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

Ella Wheeler Wilcox says: 

"So many gods, so many creeds, 

So many paths that wind and wind; 
When just the art of being kind 
Is what this old world needs." 

Charles Ames says : 

"There are deep things of God, 

Push out from the shore! 
Hast thou found much? 

Give thanks and ask for more. 
Fear not, in asking, to offend, 
God's store and bounty hath no end. 
He needeth not to be implored nor teased, 
The more we take, the better He is pleased. 
God's best of gifts is wit, to keep the cup 
Wherein He poureth blessings, right side up." 

I have traced the progress of the past centuries 
briefly, for in this way we may get the trend God 
has given by which we may better prophesy what He 
is waiting to work out for us in the Twentieth Cen- 
tury. As we stand looking so eagerly toward the 
future we recognize three principles that will have a 
part in determining the character of the age in which 
the young life of today will act its part. 

The new astronomy makes much of three cosmic 
laws. Our earth by a form of self-love caJled 
"molecular attraction" ceases to be scattered dust, 
and takes on the form of a rich and beautiful planet. 
But self -loved our earth is also sun-loved; and 
drawn by invisible bands is swept forward out of 
winter into summer. Then enters in a third prin- 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 45 

ciple by which Neptune and Uranus, lying- on the 
edge of space, seek fellowship with our planet and 
hold it at a fixed distance from the sun's fierce heat. 
Thus, self-love has given our earth individuality, the 
love of other planets secures stability, while the sun's 
love gives movement and health. Working to- 
gether these three principles secure the harmony 
and stability of the planetary system. Similarly 
each individual is a part of a great social system. 
Each moves forward under the embrace of three 
laws called "Love to Self, Love to Neighbor, Love 
to God." Upon obedience to these laws rests all the 
hope of future centuries. 

Now as we plan for the future we are driven back 
to the proposition set forth in the early part of this 
lecture, viz: "The Twentieth Century will take its 
character from that of the men and women who are 
to live in it." How important, then, that with the 
destiny of a generation or generations resting upon 
them the men and women who are to take up the 
work of the present century should recognize their 
opportunities and responsibilities. For in the fu- 
ture more than in the past society will recognize the 
debt of strength to weakness; of success to failure. 
The man who has skill in speech will be the voice 
for the dumb. Those who have skill in gathering 
wealth will be almoners of bounty in art, education 
and morals. In those days men who selfishly get 
much and give little; who become dead seas of ac- 
cumulated treasure, will lose their standing in so- 



46 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

ciety. More and more the world will come to honor 
and esteem those who serve their fellows. Men 
will be magazines, sending out their kindness every- 
where. Men will be gardens, filling the world with 
fragrance. Men will be castles in which the poor 
will find protection. The floods of iniquity have 
long covered the earth, but Love is the dove bring- 
ing the olive-branch of peace. Love sings the 
dawn of a new Dispensation, and heralds the regen- 
eration of our national life, when cannon shall be 
rolled into their resting places, swords beaten into 
plowshares and bayonets into pruning hooks. 

"When the war drum throbs no longer 
And the battle flags are furled 
In the parliament of man, 
The federation of the world." 

And nations learn war no more. For we, who 
scarcely yet can see wisely to rule ourselves, are set 
where ways are met, to lead the waiting nations on. 

"Not for our own land now is Freedom's flag unfurled, but 

for the world. 
Under its folds shall brothers be knit in closer bands, 
From the mountain crest to the gray sea sands." 
"When Freedom from her mountain height 
Unfurled her standard on the air, 
She had no narrow bounds in sight, 

Intending just to float it there! 
She named no rivers and no seas, 
No longitudinal degrees, 

Past which her flag was not to go ! 
She chose no creed, she picked no race, 
She singled out no favored place 
For Freedom here below. 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 47 

But shaking out the flashing stars, 
And flinging forth the glorious bars, 
Gave to the islanders of the sea 
The right to share with you and me 
The blessings of the flag, if they 
But care to step from night to day, 
And bathe and ballot and obey." 

Prudence and statesmanship are today required 
to decide whether distant territory shall come perma- 
nently under our control or be left a rapidly spread- 
ing domain of hostile despotism. Whether the civ- 
ilization of the Twentieth Century will bless or 
curse the peoples who have come under our political 
control will depend upon its character and quality. 
If we are to carry beneficent civilization to the ends 
of the earth through our political, commercial and 
social contact, there is urgent need that we evangel- 
ize our own country, and make thoroughly efficient 
every agency of Christian training and education. 
Liberty must be ennobled and sanctified by moral 
obligation. Statues of "Liberty Enlightening the 
World" must illuminate those "Islands of the Sea." 
The oceans that surround them must yield their 
mythological "Neptune" to the genius of the Ameri- 
can sailor ; and as our mighty commerce bearers of 
the deep majestically move toward the "Rising Sun 
of Gibraltar" and the Mediterranean, as their huge 
hulks course the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the 
Bay of Bengal, or, westward across the Isthmus, 
with their shadows painting momentary grandeur 
upon the gleaming islands of the Western ocean; 



48 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

from the stars that shine upon our nation's emblem 
at their masthead, all peoples and nations of the 
world must catch the spirit of that "Angel Chorus" 
first heard by Judea's shepherds on Bethlehem's 
plains, and yet to rise from every human lip, "Peace 
on Earth, Good Will Toward Men." The American 
Republic in the coming centuries must rest upon the 
sure foundations of Righteousness ; failing which no 
nation can long exist or be permanently exalted. A 
government such as ours can find a solid foundation 
only on the intelligence and virtue of its people, and 
in the knowledge and word of Him who is the God 
and Ruler of Nations. 

These are our true and only safeguards. Educa- 
tion and virtue are as essential to the life of a nation 
as are brain and heart to the life of man. The "Ten 
Commandments" should be as binding upon nations 
as upon individuals. 

Away yonder in the gray morning of the Seven- 
teenth Century we see the "Mayflower" rolling on 
the mighty storm swells of the Atlantic, her rotten 
sides gaping to the sea, her tattered sails fluttering 
in the gale, with hope of reaching land almost aban- 
doned. But the hand of Almighty God is upon her 
staggering form ; His breath upon her canvas ; every 
nail in her timbers as sacred as the "Ark of the 
Covenant." Her prow scrapes the shores of Mas- 
sachusetts Bay, a company of tired mariners kneel 
upon "Plymouth Rock" and this mighty nation of 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 49 

today was born in prayer. If it does not fulfill its 
high destiny God will remove His favor from us, 
and America among the nations of the world will 
become a "byword and a hissing." We will not be- 
lieve that our civilization will perish. We of this 
generation and nation occupy the gibraltar of the 
ages, on which the world's future rests. 

"America, 'gainst wrong thy might be hurled ; 
America, our country for the world." 

But you with Whittier say, 

"Ye are whispering truth — 
Whisper no longer; 
Speak as the tempest does, 
Sterner and stronger." 

Then I trust I may not be considered pessimistic 
if I call to your attention some reforms that need to 
be inaugurated as we enter upon the second decade 
of the Twentieth Century. 

A pessimist is one who has an ingrowing grudge 
against humanity in general, and himself in particu- 
lar. He sees failures hopelessly. The true opti- 
mist sees the failures, but never loses faith in the 
manhood and womanhood of America. The man 
for the future must possess three qualities in a 
greater degree than his ancestors. One of these is 
genuineness. He will start out to be frank with 
himself. We may not have thought much about it, 
but it is with one's self that all deception begins. 
Men do not undertake to deceive others until they 



50 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

have first succeeded in deceiving themselves. It's 
a rare thing for a man to sit down and talk over 
every creed, every political tenet, every business 
proposition, every love, fairly and frankly and fully 
with his conscience, and then to go out and do and 
say just what he and his conscience have agreed is 
right. The man who does this will never be fooled 
into thinking that wealth without character is worth 
having ; or that place without inherent power is to be 
desired ; or that pleasure without peace of conscience 
is worth what it costs. He will live face to face 
with himself and he will repel every proffer of pro- 
motion that would tend to bring estrangement be- 
tween himself and his conscience. The man who 
lives in this way will never be the enemy of his 
fellow. He who can do no wrong to his own con- 
science will be slow to put out his hand against 
another man ; for notwithstanding all the pious talk 
about loving your neighbor, Christ made no mistake 
when He told us to love others as we love ourselves. 
The religion which fancies that it loves God and 
evinces no love for man, is not piety, but a mildewed 
theology, a dogma with a worm in its heart. There 
must be a self-respect, a self-frankness out of which 
alone can spring the highest and noblest treatment 
of society. The ideal man of the future will be gen- 
uine ; then, he will be a Puritan. And in that word 
there is a charm that will never be lost on a New 
England ear, for it is closely associated with all that 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 51 

is great in New England history. Every spot of 
New England earth has a story to tell of them. 
Every cherished institution of New England society 
bears the imprint of their minds, and the strongest 
elements of New England character have been trans- 
mitted with their blood. 

Perhaps the most ominous fact in the life of today 
is the defeat of the people. Although the Nine- 
teenth Century placed in the hands of the common 
folks the scepter of the State, as yet they have not 
been able to resist the gold of the men who would 
make them hirelings. Fighting the battles of their 
masters instead of those of their country. 

The fundamental principle of the present civiliza- 
tion is the right of the people to rule. But at pres- 
ent the principle has outrun the practice. It may be 
the simple matter of getting a franchise in a city. 
Outside monopolists "stand in" with the Council, 
procure special legislation and drive through their 
schemes without the slightest regard to the wishes 
of those whose families have lived there for genera- 
tions. 

During the darkest month in our latest financial 
depression, when business of the country was stag- 
nant, when capital was idle and labor paralyzed, our 
national Congress spent weeks discussing frivolous 
propositions, and went home not having written a 
line that would tend to start a wheel or feed a single 
hungry child. 



52 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

What Docs This Modern World Need? 

A revival of Puritanism. Social and industrial 
conditions will never be permanently better in this 
country until individuals and society recognize the 
everlasting truth that all men live daily in the pres- 
ence of the Almighty, and are forever responsible 
to Him. What made the "Ironsides" invincible? 
They could fight all day because they had prayed all 
night. 

The lines separating right and wrong, virtue and 
vice, are growing dim in these modern days. Lux- 
ury and effeminacy are taking their place. Too 
much of the literature of today is mere dirt ; a cov- 
ering of cancers with a cloth of gold. The stage 
has too largely fotgotten its Greek dignity, and has 
too largely become a place where vice panders to 
vice. Let the old Puritans come back, in the spirits 
of their descendants! We would not have them 
desecrate cathedrals nor touch that which is beauti- 
ful in art; but we would have them, with their 
austere moralities, deal with paganisms, luxuries, 
fashionable vices, polluted literature and with the 
brazen effrontery of those who disgrace the modern 
stage, for they are as "wells without water, clouds 
carried as with a tempest, to whom the mist of 
darkness is reserved forever. ,, We want no distor- 
tions of puritanism; but we do need its essential 
spirit. That spirit that will never compromise with 
evil ; which is impervious to the fascinations of vice, 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 53 

and is as loyal to purity in the individual, the family 
and society as King Arthur was loyal to his knightly 
vows. The men for the Twentieth Century must 
get back to that puritanism that recognizes God as 
Sovereign over all, and declares that before that 
Sovereign all men have equal rights. 

And the man for the Twentieth Century must 
surpass the Nineteenth Century man in reverence. 
Reverence is the "alphabet of nobleness. ,, An ir- 
reverent man can no more be a nobleman than one 
can be a scholar who has not learned his letters. 
We have no ancient traditions in America to keep 
reverence alive as they have in Europe! Across 
the ocean stand cathedrals a thousand years old. 
There are customs hoary-headed with antiquity. 
Men live in cities whose walls have witnessed the 
battles of centuries. These cities and cathedrals 
and customs tend to keep alive a spirit of reverence 
for the past. 

We have no "class distinctions" in America. No 
ancient families whose ancestors for a thousand 
years have lived in the same home. It is difficult 
for a young American to comprehend what it means, 
to look up to a man, unless that man chance to have 
a marriageable daughter! A young man asked a 
father's consent to marry his daughter. "Can you 
give her as good a home as she now has ?" asked the 
father. "No, sir," replied the young fellow, "but I 
can give her as good a home as you gave her mother 
when you married her." The reaction against 



54 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

"Puritanism" is tending against reverence. It is 
scarcely customary in these days to teach children 
reverence for parents or teachers. Formerly every 
boy doffed his cap and bowed reverently to the min- 
ister. Today some of our preachers get along first- 
class if the boy does not greet them as familiarly 
as he does me, with "Hello, Baldy." One of our 
most sedate and scholarly ministers was going from 
his "church study" across to his home on the ave- 
nue when there strode up behind him a half-intoxi- 
cated young American, who slapped him rudely on 
the back, saying, "Hello, old tombstone, I'm loaded 
to the muzzle." The cultured, Christian gentleman 
said to him: "Sir, forbear, forbear." "Oh, bless 
you," replied the young ruffian, "not for bear, just 
for sociability." 

The spirit of criticism is tending against rever- 
ence. We will not allow any mysteries; we're de- 
termined to solve them; and we're not wise enough 
to know that when they are solved they are as much 
as before entitled to our reverence. 

The sectarian spirit that leads us to criticise other 
denominations is teaching the world to lose its rev- 
erence for all the faiths. The present century can- 
not restore the same basis of reverence that has ex- 
isted in the past. Places will never be holy to us 
because some great man has stood there; but this 
century will teach that every place is holy place, 
that every ground is holy ground because it is a por- 
tion of the house the Father has made for His chil- 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 55 

dren. We cannot re-establish a united ritual by 
which we all agree to climb to God's throne by steps 
worn by the knees of the centuries, but we must 
gain that broader and more Catholic reverence that 
sees God in every form by which any soul seeks to 
worship Him. There is more religion in the dev- 
otee who kneels before the crucifix in the Roman 
cathedral telling her beads than in the supercilious 
man who carries his Oxford Bible under his arm 
and looks at her with contempt for what he is 
pleased to call her "superstition." We sometimes 
treat the ignorant foreigner who toils in our mills or 
mines with contempt. But the Twentieth Century 
will teach that as God is the Father of all men, all 
men are brothers. Nothing will more ennoble and 
fit for living the Twentieth Century man than his 
reverence for God and all God has made. How the 
creation that waited so long for the coming of the 
first man waits for the man who will honor the 
Twentieth Century. 

How we need him today in literature ! I believe 
fully in a destiny of progress ; but when I read after 
the new school of "Realism" I would lose my faith 
in the future purity of the race if I did not know that 
such a movement is but the downward ebb before 
the rising tide of "Idealism" that shall wash away 
all the filth laid about by such writers as Zola and 
his kith. It is foolishly thought to be progress in 
literature when the writer can paint his hero or 
heroine in the darkest colors he ever wears. It is a 



56 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

false defense for the school to say that this is "Real- 
ism" and so is true. Many of our present day 
writers have lost sight of that deeper principle so 
well understood by writers of a few decades ago, 
that the Ideal, and not the Real, is in the deepest 
sense true. That author has a low conception of his 
mission who thinks it consists in painting men and 
women at their lowest, or even at their average. 
He has no business to write who cannot do some- 
thing for us that we cannot do for ourselves. His 
mission as he will see it in the Twentieth Century 
will be to incarnate in his characters the Ideal; so 
that the reader will rise from the reading with faith 
in the possibility of himself to become the ideal. 
Already a surfeited reading public turn from men 
and women who write for dimes to men and women 
who will write for manhood and womanhood. 

Our faith that the Twentieth Century will reveal 
many such noble men and women is strengthened by 
the fact that the close of the Nineteenth Century 
gave us a MacLaren, who found in the humble pea- 
santry of a Scotch glen virtues which transform 
rugged features into holy faces, and reveal to us the 
purest ideals among the most prosaic environment. 

Each year we are puzzling more and more over 
the "labor" question. We admit that the army of 
"capital" and the army of "labor" stand face to face, 
and we fear the conflict that ever and anon breaks 
out afresh. We have asked representatives of capi- 
tal and representatives of labor to tell us how the 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 57 

conflict can be suppressed. They have given us 
many replies. Anarchism, profit-sharing, boycot- 
ting, nationalism, co-operation and courts are among 
some of the remedies suggested. Some of these 
may be helpful, but the problem will be solved in 
this century, and it will be when the leaders of both 
armies are men who have sat at the feet of the 
"Lowly Nazarene" and have learned how to do unto 
others as they would have others do unto them. 
Then the command to one army will be "Wheel- 
right," to the other "Lef t- wheel,' ' and there will be 
one army marching on to grander victories than the 
world has ever seen. Then the "dog-like strife for 
the bone" will cease. Flowers will grow over the 
jagged walls and debris of present differences and 
hateful bitterness, and we'll become civilized. 

"Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay." 

How we need men today in civil government? 
With officials in high places, some of whose seats 
we have reason to think were bought for cash, as if 
they were seats in the Stock Exchange. Men whose 
official honor would not restrain them from specu- 
lating in products, and then tinkering with a "tariff 
bill" in order to make their speculations profitable; 
men who if the country today was financially pros- 
trate would stop to pilfer the pockets of the wounded 
before giving relief; oh, how the nation waits for 
men who in high places will be true, We have ob- 



58 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

jected to having a polygamist sit in the United 
States Senate, why should a briber and a seducer of 
the public conscience be there? If liberty and indi- 
vidual sovereignty be for sale, make the deal an 
open one ; give every one a show in the despoilation 
of the temple; if not, cut political corruptionists off 
and get back to the virtue of public and private life 
founded by the fathers. Let our motto be, "Our 
Country." When wrong, to be put right. When 
right, to be kept right. For the wrongness of 
wrong and the rightness of right, are unchangeable, 
eternal. 

A spirit of lawlessness is astir in our land today 
because men whose sworn duty it is to see that laws 
are executed choose to let some laws go unexecuted. 
So it was recently in a town of a sister State. The 
populace, enraged by a heinous crime, sought to take 
the life of the cowering brute whom the Court had 
promptly given the highest penalty under the law, 
the mayor of the town dismissed the soldiers sent to 
his support, and made it possible for the generally 
reputable citizens of that town to become cowardly 
murderers, and to drag the fair name it had hitherto 
borne down into the "sewer of lawlessness" which 
is making our boasted "civilization" a byword and a 
reproach. 

Our cities are cursed with a business that defies 
the law of the land and openly barters death on the 
Lord's Day. Mayors with power enough to inaugu- 
rate and carry to completion magnificent enterprises 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 59 

for the material well-being of a city dare not even 
see what is patent to the merest child. An ordi- 
nance for the suppression of vice is introduced into 
the Common Council, and its passage asked and 
urged by thousands of intelligent and law abiding 
citizens. Then a majority of our city's legislators, 
some because they delight in lawlessness and others 
because they're cowards, cringe and fawn at the 
wrong-doer's feet and vote it down. Some man 
violates the half-way liquor law we now have in 
New York. He's brought into court, but among 
the men in the jury box sworn to render a verdict in 
accordance with the evidence and the law, enough 
can be found who will sell their souls to let the of- 
fender go free. Oh, how a humiliated citizenship 
waits for men who'll be brave enough, and true 
enough, and honest enough to know that what the 
law forbids it's treason for them to permit. With 
Holland we plead for the Twentieth Century — 

God give us Men ! A time like this demands 

Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands. 

Men whom the lust of office will not kill ; 

Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy. 
Men who have opinions and a will ; 

Men who have honor, men who will not lie. 
Men who can face a demagogue and scorn his 

Treacherous flatteries without winking. 
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog 

In public duty and in private thinking. 
For while the rabble with its thumb-worn creeds, 
Its loud professions and little deeds, 
Mingle in selfish strife, lo ! Freedom weeps, 
And waiting Justice sleeps." 



60 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

"But to the front the cry is ringing; 

To the front, your place is there ; 
In the conflict men are wanted, 

Men of faith and hope and prayer." 
"And as we climb upon the heights, 

The low horizon widens on cur sight 
Into a day gilt with perpetual sun. 

Out of the darkness of night 

The world will swing into light, 
And it will be daybreak everywhere." 

And the promise of all this is in the present. Sci- 
ence has done enough to show us that in this century 
every power that God has made to be the servant 
of man will be harnessed to his chariot, so that he 
will need to do no work save that which makes him 
strong. Woman has done enough to show that in 
the present century she is to be her brother's ally, 
bringing that keen insight and moral power that 
will enable him to win. the battles he has fought so 
long in vain. Good government has won small vic- 
tories enough to convince us that the first half of the 
Twentieth Century will see the city and the nation 
rid of the demagogue, and ruled by men who love 
God and their fellow-men. The churches have 
knocked off rails enough from the sectarian fences 
to give promise that in the coming decades of this 
century no sect will be maintained simply for the 
sake of the sect, but for the glory of God and the 
salvation of men. All this we are to see in the 
Twentieth Century already billowing with the ripen- 
ing harvests of golden opportunities and possibili- 
ties. Survey the field. What resources ? The ma- 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 61 

jestic current of progress and prosperity that is 
sweeping over our land is widening with every 
swing of Time's pendulum. Every ship that leaves 
her ports for foreign shores is heavier laden. Every 
mile of railroad trackage is bearing the burden of 
greater trains. Her broad acres are intelligently 
tilled and her harvests tell of abundant riches. Her 
towns are fast becoming cities. Her millions in- 
vested in industrial enterprises are rapidly changing 
into billions. Her people are setting their faces 
toward the goal of prosperity with a determination 
born of hope and augmented by the successes already 
attained. The history of America in the Twentieth 
Century by every right of material riches should and 
will be more brilliant than that of any other nation 
in the world. Her gracious smile awaits the tide of 
incoming immigration. Her broad prairies, her fer- 
tile mountains and hillside slopes, her rich valleys 
and crystal streams, her beds of coal, her fountains 
of oil, her mines of iron, silver and gold, her grow- 
ing villages, her populous cities all pulsate with 
quickened life, and stretch forth the hand of wel- 
come with bright promises of prosperity. 

Ours is indeed a goodly heritage. How immense 
in extent, how limitless in resources? Science, 
commerce and Christianity are opening the doors of 
the world to American enterprise. The constant 
hammering of all the great nations of the world at 
China's doors is making itself heard. Western 
thought, enterprise and business development bid 



62 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

fair soon to gain a permanent footing in that ancient 
realm, that with more than 2,500 years of authentic 
history before the "Christian Era" has stood with its 
back to the future building across the track of Prog- 
ress. The warm, new breath of the Twentieth Cen- 
tury is breathing a "living soul under her ribs of 
death." 

"He is sounding forth the trumpet 
That shall never call retreat ; 
He is sifting out the hearts of men 
Before His Judgment Seat." 

God, with the Anglo Saxon race, is marching on. 
And under that glorious banner upon which we 
read "Go ye into all the world," we go, with the 
plowshare and the pruning hook, with the Bible and 
the spelling book. In the jungle and on the hilltop 
the "Emblem of Freedom" will float over countless 
schoolhouses. We go to open the dark places of the 
world ; to let out fetid poisons and miasmatic vapors. 
We go not to pillage temples, but to erect them. 
Not to stifle Liberty, but to give nobler ideas of lib- 
erty. Not to forge fetters, but to break them; not 
to teach the "survival of the fittest" but to make men 
fit to survive. 

Dream not that the best is past. Our fathers 
never had a clearer call to battle, nor greater in- 
centives to noble action than are ours. I rejoice 
with you in standing today upon the radiant sum- 
mit of a present so auspicious. We have passed 
into the Twentieth Century with the Panama Canal, 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 63 

the hope of the centuries, in the course of construc- 
tion. The flag of our country floats proudly from 
the ice-clad regions of golden Alaska to the sunny 
orange groves of southernmost California ; and from 
the newly rescued islands of the mid-Atlantic to the 
Philippine group in the western Pacific. This 
widening of America's influence will tend to the ush- 
ering in of that glorious day when the kingdoms of 
this world shall have become the kingdoms of our 
Lord and of His Christ. When that glad anthem 
of "Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men" shall be 
sung from pole to pole and from sea to sea. 

The "Golden Age" is just before us. The great- 
est victories of all the Christian ages are at hand; 
and to live in the Twentieth Century is the highest 
opportunity which the world affords for participa- 
tion in human progress. 

"These new occasions teach new duties, 
Time makes ancient good uncouth ; 
He must upward still, and onward, 
Who would keep abreast of Truth." 

"Then slumber not in the tents of the Fathers ; the world is 

advancing, advance with it." 
"This is the time for living, these are glorious days ; 
Be up and doing, my brothers, for the manhood of the race. 
Give what is best within you, labor with labor crown ; 
Your hands are on the lever, the world goes up or down. 
Mighty the forces of evil, turn to the guiding-stars, 
Portents are darkly lowering, devils are breaking their bar: 
Now is the time if ever to stand on the side of Right, 
To help roll the world out of the shadow, into the broaden- 
ing Light." 



64 FOOTPRINTS OF THE CENTURIES 

"Make this the time and this the hour 

To light new beacons on the hills of hope ; 
A century's born ; glorious its light, 
It's ours to shape its horoscope. 

A new and grander birth lies wrapped 
Within the Twentieth Century's fold; 

The Nazarene's glad gospel shall suffice, 
And teach the better way to win a world 

Where Peace shall reign, and war's rent flags be furled, 
Right sit enthroned where once was ribald wrong ; 

A chain of Love shall reach around the world, 
And every link within that chain be strong." 
With no north, no south, no east, no west, 
But one great land with freedom blest. 

And may — 

"Our Father's God, from out whose hand 
The centuries fall like grains of sand, 
Keep the American republic thro' centuries long, 
In peace secure, in justice strong. 
Around our boasted freedom draw 
The safeguards of His righteous law, 
And cast in a diviner mold, 
May each new century shame the old." 



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